


sum of nothing

by darlingargents



Series: Ladies Bingo 2017/2018 [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Community: ladiesbingo, F/F, Femslash February, Introspection, Memories, Post-Season/Series 02, Summer Romance, ending in death, here we go again, i really don't know how to tag this, light on plot and heavy on feelings, summertime sadness plays in the distance, that should be my brand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 19:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13794540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: My bones are shifting in my skin / and you, my love, are gone.





	sum of nothing

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm on a character death kick and I'm not really sure why.
> 
> Ladies Bingo again, for **Summertime (and the Livin' is Easy)**. Does it count? Is it too sad to count? Who knows. It's summery, at least. Summary is a lyric from The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson.

Kali should have known better.

Nothing _ever_ stayed good in her life. _Nothing_. It had started out with torture and pain, and now she was free, but she would never be _free_. Not really. Not truly.

Not free enough to protect the people she loves, and that’s what it means to be free, isn’t it? Free enough that your loved ones don’t die because of you? Don’t take a bullet meant to hit you? Don’t die because you fucked up and they were after _you_ and _it should’ve been you_.

It’s not fair, and it’s not right, and it’s like a spike of glass in her stomach to think about how it might never change.

But even if it does change, it’s too late for Nancy, and maybe that’s the worst thing of all.

* * *

They’d met on an early summer day, the beginning of June, a year and some change after Kali had first met Jane. Something had come up — some case, or problem, or issue, those things that tend to happen in that “sleepy” little town — and Jane had come to find her, and brought her back. She’d felt back for dragging Kali back into the mess, but Kali assured her that it wasn’t a problem; she was happy to help.

She’d helped them with whatever it was, but the adventure didn’t really matter now; what mattered was that she’d seen Nancy and maybe, just maybe, fallen in love at first sight.

Before that, she hadn’t even been sure she believed in love at all. Let alone at first sight. But she’d seen Nancy during the final day of that… adventure, journey, whatever, and her breath had caught in her throat, and even though Nancy had been covered in dirt and bleeding from a cut in her forehead and clutching a gun like a lifeline, she’d been beautiful.

After they’d gotten through their adventure, and they were sitting in the dark as a group — Jane sitting with Mike and holding his hand so tight his fingers were white, Steve sitting with his arms around Dustin and Max, Lucas holding Max’s hand more gently — she’d ended up next to Nancy, and without looking at her, Nancy had taken her hand, too. Clung to her fingers, shaking a little, and Kali had fallen just a little further.

She’d stayed a little longer in Hawkins, just long enough to make sure Jane was okay and the threat wasn’t going to make an immediate reappearance, and then she’d made plans to leave. And out of nowhere, Nancy had asked to come with her.

She’d just graduated, and she didn’t have immediate college plans, and she wanted to get _out_ , for just a while. That was what she said, at least. She’d told Kali later — and Kali been able to see it in her eyes, then — that they’d felt the same thing, that first meeting. There was something, between them.

And not too long into Nancy’s stay — shortly after she’d cut her hair and ripped her clothes and found a new version of herself that maybe she liked a bit better — she’d come up to Kali one evening and kissed her. Just like that.

Her mouth had been warm and her hands had been solid at Kali’s sides and it had felt like coming home.

And the months that followed had been the best of Kali’s life.

All in all, she should’ve known better than to think it would last.

* * *

Nancy had taken the bullet, and it had been over in seconds, too fast to say goodbye. Kali had killed Nancy’s killer on the spot, and later, she’d regretted not making him suffer more. But at the time, all she’d been able to think about — through the screaming and denial in her brain — was that Nancy was gone and she hadn’t even gotten to say that she loved her again. She’d held Nancy’s body in her arms and sobbed and said it over and over and over again, but it wasn’t enough. Nancy couldn’t hear her. It didn’t matter.

In the end, it summed up to nothing at all—

* * *

—nothing, except maybe the way they’d ridden side by side in Kali’s van, watching the city, their fingers entwined, neon lights playing out against their skin. The endless city lights at nighttime, all around them.

Nothing, except maybe the way they’d sat on the roof of the warehouse they were living in, sharing a cigarette in the last rays of sun, overheating in the mid-July haze, and _happy_. Kali could still taste it, if she tried: kissing away the ash and sunlight from Nancy’s smiling mouth.

Nothing, except the moments when the August heat became humid and stifling and it was too hot to sleep even at night, and they’d kicked off the sheets of their bed and lay there half-dressed trading lazy kisses.

Nothing, except walking through the city as summer wound down and the streets emptied of children playing, back to schoolbooks and classrooms. Nancy’s hair looked like flaming gold in the sunlight and her hand was solid in Kali’s as they walked with no destination in mind. Only each other.

Nothing, except _I love you_ and _hold me_ and _I trust you_ and _take me with you_.

Nothing, except that summer.

* * *

And maybe that summer was everything. Or if not everything, then _enough_.

Maybe, someday, it would be enough to stitch closed the wound in Kali’s chest as she looked at her empty bed and pretended she could still see Nancy there.


End file.
